Altice USA shed about 33,000 video customers in the third quarter, an improvement over the 40,000 subscribers it lost in the prior year, as it moves forward with plans to fully fiberize its network.
Altice USA, the domestic cable arm of European telecom company Altice N.V., ended the period with 3.4 million video customers. Revenue increased 3.2% in the period to $2.3 billion while cash flow rose 18.9% to $1.03 billion. High-speed data customers rose by 16,000 in the period, slightly less than the 17,000 in the same period last year.
"Altice USA continued to build momentum in the third quarter and delivered strong results while advancing our strategy of offering a more robust and differentiated product portfolio to meet customers' needs,” CEO Dexter Goei said in a statement. “We remain focused on investing in innovation, superior service and a reliable network, as demonstrated by the launch of Altice One, which is just the beginning of a new, better and simple experience for our customers. We have a leadership position regarding the connected home and we are delivering on its potential.”
While the company improved video losses, oei said on a conference call with reporters that the launch of its new platform – Altice One – is expected to improve the video and high-speed data experience, which could lead to even better performance.
The company added that its Generation Gigaspeed fiber-to-the-home upgrade project is on track to reach 1 million homes by the end of the 2018. Already, design and construction have commenced for several hundred thousand homes in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut (one million homes to be designed by year end 2017).
Goei added that he remained optimistic regarding a possible wireless offering in the future. Altice USA currently is in talks with providers and the CEO said, as he has stated before, that he is open to deals similar to what Comcast and Charter have with Verizon Communications.
“We clearly don’t believe that we need to own a network today,” Goei said. “So we are looking at partnering up potentially with a mobile operator who will provide us with access to his network. Hopefully, at some point, we’ll have more concrete thoughts on that.”
